FLIGHT, JANUARY 1 i »:»2
By prearrangement, instead of flying directly to
Cozumel, we headed over the northern peninsula of
Yucatan to pick up a large inlet marked on the map as
being about thirty miles north of a ruin known as Kan-
tunil. Upon arriving there, however, we found no inlet
as marked on the map, which considerably hampered our
getting accurately located. Finally, by flying south from
this point to the ruin at Coba—which, incidentally, was
also inaccurately indicated—we began to get some idea of
the lay of the country, and had become sufficiently
orientated for our flights the following day. With this
knowledge we headed for Cozumel, where we landed on
the water. Fortunately, it was not necessary to remove
all the artillery and cutlery again at this point, the ship
remaining with its nose on the beach all night.
There is a native village on the island of Cozumel,
known as San Miguel, the inhabitants of which are mostly
descendants of the Mayan Indians. On the day of our
arrival, they were holding some sort of native festival,
and insisted that we go around to the town in a small
motor-boat, a distance of about thirty miles on the open
sea, to a dance there that evening. Although we were
not particularly keen about the trip or the dance, it
seemed about the only prospect of finding a place to sleep,
so we headed for the open sea in a very small motor-boat.
The " voyage " seemed interminable. The water was
very rough, the night was pitch black, and our escort had
the temerity to tell us that the water was all full of rocks.
Aside from these little annoyances and the discomfort of
being drenched to the skin, we had a more or less enjoy
able time. We managed to get dried out when we
reached the village (which, incidentally, does not appear
to have had the benefit of civic promotion campaigns), and
attended the dance in the evening, letter we were ushered
to beds in one of the native huts on the island. The beds
were quite comfortable ; the only interrupting element
to sound sleep was a scorpion, which kept crawling around
under Mr. Alden Mason's bed and in the monuug uu.dly
decided to get into the bed. Fortunately, Alden wu
able to catch up with it before it did any .iatn.i^.
As we prepared to take leave the next morning, the
General in charge of the village insisted on kissing us all
before we left. This procedure seemed a little out of the
ordinary, but, not wishing to seem ungrateful tor the
hospitality of the night, we acquiesced. After which we
proceeded once more on our thirty-mile journey on the
open sea, including another unscheduled shower bath,
arriving back at the plane delightfully wet. and all ready
for the morning's work.
Leaving Cozumel on the morning of December 4, we
(lew southward down the east coast of Yucatan to a large
inlet about fifty miles to the south. Most of this flying
was done at quite a low altitude, in order that we might
inspect the temples along the seafront. After reaching
the inlet, we flew inland over the jungle, and then north
to the lakes at Coba. We discovered that these lake bad
been incorrectly indicated on the map by a distance of
approximately fifteen miles. We endeavoured to Racer-
tain their exact location geographically by flying compass
courses from Coba and finding exactly at what point we
struck the island of Cozumel. We would then fly to the
southern point of Cozumel, follow a compass course to
Coba, and finally from that point fly back to the northern
point of Cozumel. Ultimately we had five compass bear
tngs, and we were able accurately to fix the exact longi
tude and latitude of the village. We also discovered that
there are five lakes there instead of two as originally
charted.
After this first day of flying, we decided that the only
way to pick out new pyramids was to fly very low over
the tree-tops, clearing them by about ten feet ; the
temples would then stand up in clear silhouette. Inas
much as this was rather a dangerous undertaking, we
concluded that it would be best, rather than tly consistently
Beautiful Lake Petah, Chiapas, Mexico, the beauty of which can only be appreciated from the air,
since it lies hidden deep in the almost impenetrable forest lands.
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